Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 264

“Contemporary general education, all strictures notwithstanding, must be credited with remarkable accomplishments in the teaching of science as well as in other subjects. In comparison, religious education must be regarded as having fallen short of its goals. It would be irresponsible to conceal what most of us acknowledge.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 52)

This essay/talk, “Idols in the Temples” was given in November of 1962 to a convention of the Rabbinical Assembly, the organization of Rabbis who belong to the Conservative Movement within Judaism. Oh, how I wish these words could have, would have been heard and heeded. While there are people who will argue about our general education accomplishments today, we have still done a good job at teaching the “3 R’s”, and we have made higher education and trade schools more available than ever before. While the bias of some colleges to the left and to the right is overshadowing the education at times, all in all, the teaching of science, math, reading, is still very good.

The main issue of this paper is, of course, the sad state of religious education! How far we have fallen in caring for the moral and spiritual needs of our young and ourselves. We have sent them to Churches, Temples, Mosques, etc and celebrated their lifecycles and then bastardized the very ways of religious life they are taught, that we were taught. We see no value in growing our spiritual life and we accept phony “ecstatic” moments as religious events, as religious education-they are not! We have spent the past centuries dumbing down religious education and not making it part of our everyday lives.

The ‘good christian values and people’ that Trump and the Republicans speak of, that the Heritage Foundation and Freedom Caucus proclaim as their guiding light are nothing more than bastardizations of Christ’s words and deeds. Their promoting racial hatred and Jim Crow laws, their support of white supremacists and the KKK are nothing more than hatred disguised as religious fervor. The ways they are dealing with the poor and the stranger, the widow, orphan and the needy are despicable according to what the Bible says and Jesus did! Yet, they proclaim that Jesus loves them because they are rich and powerful, the exact opposite of what Jesus said and did-yet they seem to be ‘getting away’ with their lies and deceptions.

Jews, here in America and in Israel, are not doing much better! The so-called ‘religious jews’ have vilified their own people by calling those who do not hold their same opinions and take the same actions ‘not really jews’ by asserting they are the ‘true jews’! They have made it a point to not care for the poor and the needy, the stranger and the widow/orphan unless they are in their ‘camp’. Their hatred of Arabs and Palestinians, our cousins by the way, is palpable and disgusting- going against the teachings of the Bible! Yet, they seem oblivious to any of these “Hillul Hashems”, Desecrations of God’s Name, they commit on a daily basis. Whether it is portraying Bibi as a great Prime Minister or Trump as a savior of Jews/good for Israel, these days ‘good jews’ go along with the hatred and deceptions that have come to be commonplace from both of these men and their ‘camps’.

Radical Islam has taken the Koran to depths that also have no relationship to the words and deeds of Mohammed. Islam means “submission to God” and, instead, these radical disbelievers want everyone to submit to them! They have been willing to kill people, innocent people, for a long time, in order to get their way-not Allah’s way- their selfish, power-hungry, wealth producing way. The royal families, the heads of Hezbollah, Hamas, all live very well while the masses live in squalor and poverty. The money spent on caves and weapons could have made Gaza a vacation paradise and put enormous pressure on Israel to find a two-state solution-yet these “good muslims” decided to make war, to submit to their deceptive and evil minds instead!

We are worse off in our religious education today than we were 62 years ago! Imagine if our religious schools would have been teaching spiritual principles and how to grow, mature, and nurture our spiritual health to both kids and their parents. Imagine if instead of dogma, the ways of the Bible were spoken about as ways to live with one another, if instead of the goal being confirmation, Bar/Bat Mitzvah, etc the goal of religious education would be to grow moral and spiritual adults who are never satisfied in either realm because we know we can and must grow at least one grain of sand better each day.

I have been teaching how to live Jewishly for over 35 years ever since I first learned this path in Prison from Rabbi Mel Silverman and Maimonidies, Buber, the Hasidic Rebbes, Rabbi Heschel, and then when I was released from Rabbi Omer-man, z”l, Rabbi Shulweis, z”l, Rabbi Feinstein, and many others. I learned early on that what the commentators say about the Bible or the Talmud is not as important as how I understand and say about the words and actions in them. I realized early on that our way of understanding and living into the words and deeds that we are taught about in our Holy Texts is what makes them Eternal in Truth and Wisdom. I realized there truly is “nothing new under the sun” and I was, at first, angry with the poor education I received while attending Hebrew School and realized they were responding to the wants of their congregants, not leading their congregations to what God wants and/or the needs and wants of the spiritual lives of their congregants. I have compassion for them as well as contempt. In leading the residents and congregants of Beit T’Shuvah for almost 30 years as their spiritual leader/Rabbi, I have been more concerned with the understanding of the text, with calling out our heroes when they were wrong and extolling their capacity to rise above their selfishness and do the next right thing. I am in awe of King David who, for all of his womanizing, depicts the war within so well-he is a poet and a psalmist as well as a warrior and selfish-a killer and a lover who, when confronted could admit both his wrongdoing and ask for forgiveness. He had compassion and strength-he was both the lion and the lamb. This is the religious education we need more of, not learning to hate, rather living into “love thy neighbor as thyself”. We need our religious education which never stops to speak to our spiritual needs and not be so concerned with the dogma of any and all denominations. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment